Brooklyn may get a brand-new 5-mile subway line

A guess at the route of
the proposed line for the Utica Ave subway
line.Good Maps

New York City's Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to see a new subway
line in Brooklyn.

In his outline for his new mobility plan "OneNYC," de Blasio
called for a study to investigate the feasibility of a subway
line down the Utica Ave corridor of Brooklyn.

The mayor called this part of NYC "one of the densest areas of
the city without direct access to the subway," according to
transit advocacy blog Second Ave Sagas.

As noted in
the New York Times, this isn't the first time the idea
of running the subway down Utica Ave has been proposed. It was
included in subway expansion plans from 1910s, 1920s, and
re-introduced as recently as the 1970s

Though it's not a new idea,
director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York
University Mitchell Moss told
The Times that "no one expected" this announcement for
the mayor.

It's still unclear how this
expansion would take shape – whether it would branch off
the 4 train from the Eastern Parkway line; or the A or C
trains from the Fulton St line (or another proposal
altogether).

Another big question is: Who
would pay for this rather large project, when the MTA – who would
be responsible for the project – has an awful track record for
finishing capital projects on budget? That's not to mention the
astronomical $15 billion budget gap in the MTA's funding, which
would already likely mean a large cut in MTA's proposed capital
improvement projects.

It would also take a big chunk
of time.

"It’s obviously an idea that
will take more than a decade to be carried
out,"Moss said. "But you
have to start with an idea.”